So...some of you following my stuff will have noticed that I recently posted a chapter of a possible Star Wars/Borderlands crossover...which, at the moment, is going nowhere. But I had a number of ideas for a Potterverse crossover with Borderlands, and this one seemed to lend itself best to a story. I actually finished playing Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! for the first time recently (well, the main story: I'll be embarking on Claptastic Voyage at a later date). I personally think it was unjustly maligned, with the main problems, IMO, being the short time (in comparison to the other instalments of the series) it takes to finish it, and the railroading of Lilith's character in the framing story into an unlikeable bitch (which is inconsistent to a degree, given how she doesn't blame Angel for Roland's death, but she blames Athena). Other than that, I think many people didn't get the Aussie jokes and references, as it was partly developed by 2K Games Australia.
Anyway, this story will have a Harry/Angel pairing, albeit with a possible third party being involved, one that, regardless of whether I include her or not, will be a pleasant surprise to Borderlands fans. And, of course, we'll have Athena/Janey. I hope you enjoy, and I hope to make this a full fic...
WIZARD OF ELPIS
CHAPTER 1:
A WIZARD ON THE MOON
So, you wanna hear a story, huh? Well, sit right down, and I'll tell you one hell of a tale. It's an unbelievable tale, but I assure you, it's all true. Well, mostly.
Not so long ago, the fate of Pandora hung in the balance. There was the Vault, an alien prison opened by a mystical key, and filled with seemingly nothing more than tentacles and disappointment. To the Vault Hunters who opened it, it was an aggravating end to their quest, especially while trying to stop Atlas from running roughshod over Pandora. But to another, it was an opportunity.
They didn't know it, but the Guardian Angel who led them into opening the Vault was a prisoner of her father, a programmer working for the Hyperion Corporation. His name was Jack, and while a key programmer within the corporation, he chafed under the heel of its CEO, and hungered for power. The Vault, and the Eridium it spewed out once the Destroyer had been put paid to, were key to his plans. So too was his daughter, a Siren who could influence electronics, and whom he believed, in his delusions, that he was protecting her by incarcerating her.
But then, Jack caught wind of another Vault, on Pandora's moon, Elpis. He decided to recruit a group of Vault Hunters under his control. Athena, the ex-Atlas Crimson Lance assassin. Wilhelm, the infamous mercenary cyborg enforcer. Nisha, a ruthless gunslinger. Lady Aurelia Hammerlock, the scion of the Hammerlock line. Timothy Lawrence, the first of Jack's body doubles. And a Claptrap unit, reprogrammed into a fighter.
However, he did not know it, but the Vault had a protector. Not a monster left behind by the Eridians, the beings who created the Vaults in the first place. Rather, the infamous Lost Legion, part of the Dahl's PMC that was abandoned and disappeared on Elpis during the Crackening, some four years prior to Jack sniffing around, and its leader was Colonel Tungsteena Zarpedon. Don't let her stupid name fool you. She was a powerful foe. And she decided to destroy Elpis, for the sake of saving the universe. An overreaction? Most definitely, and yet, from what we heard afterwards, she was right in her fears, though how she acted on them…heh. I daresay thousands of people would have disagreed with her. The population of Elpis, such as it was, and much of the population of Pandora would have been wiped out…for the Greater Good. She would have wiped out a lot of my customer base as well, which is utterly unforgivable, but I digress.
It was a mess. And I think it would have been worse, had it not been for a confluence of events. You see, Zarpedon had family. One was a daughter she was forced to give to relatives while in the army. The two reunited later in life. However, she also ended up adopting a young boy she found on her ship, the Drakensburg. A boy who had strange abilities, abilities that led her to take him to a clinic on Elpis, a clinic that was being visited by Jack and his daughter.
But when the Crackening happened, and the Drakensburg crashed, Zarpedon saw her adopted son vanish in a blast of azure flames in the chaos. She believed her son had perished. She soon disappeared after Dahl abandoned her and her legion. Many believed her as dead as her son. But both were misconceptions.
Her son came back to Elpis over three years after the Crackening, with others in tow. He learned of his mother's apparent fate, and mourned, before teaming up with a scrapper of his acquaintance, Janey Springs. He made a living, repairing scrapped machines and items with his abilities, all the while trying to find a way to search for a way to save his mother, or at least salvage her remains.
Although he was known as Hadrian Zarpedon, he preferred to be called Harry, and to distance himself from his mother and her Scav enemies, he called himself by his birth name, Harry Potter…
Along the devastated lunar surface, a lanky figure loped in low-gravity strides, a forcefield rippling over his head. A shaggy mop of dark hair framed his features, with green eyes watching the path ahead intensely. A faded scar, like a lightning bolt, snaked its way out from beneath his fringe.
As he jogged (or at least the low-gravity equivalent of a jog) across the moon's surface, he looked up at the sky, at the now ever-present shape of a massive structure, shaped like a gargantuan 'H', hanging in the star-speckled void in much the same way as bricks don't. In the middle of the 'H' shape, a vast circular light, like a giant eye, stared down at them.
HARRY POTTER
AS
THE WIZARD
Magic on the Moon
But now, there were strobes of light, occasional blossoms of fire blooming on the surface, and familiar-looking shapes swarming around it. The young man, in his late teens, frowned as he watched it. Then, he tapped at a receiver in his ear. "Hey, Janey, are you there?"
The voice that came back was boisterous, with a strong Australian twang, compared to the more British accent of the young man. "Strewth, Harry, don't startle me like that! Yeah, I'm here. How did things with Deadlift go?"
"I introduced him to the dubious pleasures of terminal hypoxia," Harry said with a sardonic smirk. "Nicked his electrolaser too. And yes, I got the Moon Zoomy Digistruct Module he stole."
"Nice!" He could envision her giving him a thumbs-up through the ECHO connection, and her avatar had a cheerful smile on the ECHO heads-up display projected into his contact lenses. "So, did he have any famous last words?"
"Only that you were a kraggon-bait dyke who deserved to go the same way your slag of a girlfriend did," Harry said, with a grimace of disgust at having to repeat those slurs to his friend. Janey was a lesbian, but Deadlift didn't take no for an answer. "Why do you think I only punctured his spacesuit after freezing his feet and hand to the ground? I recorded his death if you were interested."
"Good on ya! Anyway, listen, I've managed to get the Fast Travel Station that bloody bogan bastard of a Scav leader damaged. So now, we can finally get back to Concordia. God, I hope the shop is okay. Anyway, are you seeing this shit in the sky, Harry?"
"Hard not to, Janey," Harry said. "Those look like Dahl ships attacking Helios. But I thought Dahl fucked off from Elpis after the Crackening, and fucked off from Pandora as well. Don't tell me they actually grew a pair after Atlas got thrashed by those Vault Hunters?"
"I've no bloody idea, mate," Janey said. "Anyway, I'm doing some repairs on the OxyGenerator not far from Ozless Harbour, and…STREWTH!"
Harry looked up in time to see something streak out of the sky from Helios Station, and embed itself not far from Janey's location. "Janey? Janey! Are you okay?"
"Yeah, it landed far enough away. I'm going to take a looksee. I think it was a moonshot container. Gimme a sec." Eventually, she called back. "Oi, Harry…can you do me a solid and get me…let's see…we've got a dozen OZ Kits around, right? Functioning stuff?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I've just been on the horn via ECHO. There's six people in there. Well, five people and a Claptrap unit. Claim to be Vault Hunters. Now, I don't think whether the Claptrap unit needs an OZ Kit, at least for oxygen, but the five people in there do, and they don't have much time before they suffer from carbon dioxide poisoning."
"…A Claptrap unit?" Harry groaned, even as he hurried back to Ozless Harbour, the workshop and, for the last few days, living quarters he and Janey shared. "Whoever sent that container down there must have been trying to kill them," he added as he scooped up half a dozen OZ Kits and put them into a storage bank, before hurrying out.
"I dunno what happened, mate. Just hurry!"
Harry did. While the moonshot container could hold a substantial amount of air, five people could use that up PDQ. But haste lent him speed, and he found Janey, dressed in those jeans, midriff-baring tank top and sleeveless jacket, standing near a moonshot container. She turned, revealing a cute face framed by boyishly short blonde hair, a scar across her nose.
JANEY SPRINGS
Best Mechanic This Side of Elpis
"Right." She then activated her ECHO. "Okay, my mate's come with the OZ Kits. Get ready to open up the container. You'll have only a short time to put on the OZ Kits, so we'll help you. And for fuck's sake, don't hold your breath. You'll rupture your lungs from the pressure differential."
A woman's calm voice came over the ECHO, the avatar showing a stern but beautiful young woman whose face was framed by blue hair. Harry recognised her from videos Moxxi showed him. "Understood. Opening door in three…two…one…"
The door blasted open, and a sextet of figures were flung out, rolling in the lunar dust. Quickly, Harry and Janey began fixing OZ Kits to their shoulders. Thankfully, the OZ Kits activated quickly, and the sextet of figures soon got to their feet.
"That was not the fun kind of suffocation," remarked a dark-skinned young woman, apparently of Indian descent, dressed like a cowboy from the Old West from Earth.
NISHA
AS
THE LAWBRINGER
Shoots First. Never Asks Questions.
"There IS no fun kind of suffocation, you proletarian pervert," an older dark-skinned woman retorted. "At least being on the receiving end, anyway."
LADY AURELIA HAMMERLOCK
AS
THE BARONESS
Ice Queen Bitch of the Galaxy
"Agreed. Shut up," growled a grizzled, bearded older man with a cybernetic eye.
WILHELM
AS
THE ENFORCER
Partly metal, partly real(1), all violent.
The only other man in the group was vomiting, his lean, attractive but sardonic features familiar to Harry. "Ugh, getting fired out of a moonshot cannon, nearly dying of explosive decompression…"
TIMOTHY LAWRENCE
AS
THE DOPPELGANGER
Looks Like Jack, But Actually Decent.
"…Jack?" Harry asked.
"Huh? What? Do I know you?" the man asked, blinking.
"…We met a long time ago," Harry said. "We lost contact."
"Oh, right…sorry about that, umm…"
"Harry. Harry Potter."
"Right, of course, Harry Potter…" Jack said, a little uncertainly.
"Well, I think my vocabulary circuit is loose, but that's nothing to be consorted about," shrilled a short rhomboidal robot with a single blue glowing eye.
CLAPTRAP
AS
THE FRAGTRAP
F33R MY L33T SK1LLZ!
"Pardon me," said the blue-haired woman. "Thanks for saving us, but time is of the essence."
Harry nodded up to the space battle above. "Does it have anything to do with the Dahl fleet attacking Helios Station?"
"Yes. There's a jamming signal blocking Hyperion from using their own defences," the woman said. "We have reason to believe it's coming from Elpis, but where exactly, we don't know."
"…You're Athena, aren't you?" Harry asked. "The ex-Crimson Lance assassin?"
"…I am. Do we know each other?" she asked, wary but surprised.
ATHENA
AS
THE GLADIATOR
Be Polite. Be Efficient. Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet.
"No, but Mad Moxxi runs the Up Over Bar in Concordia, and she showed me footage of your exploits when General Knoxx occupied Pandora," Harry said.
"Yeah," Janey said. "Moxxi might know where this jamming signal is…either that, or the Meriff of Concordia."
"Meriff?" scoffed the Indian woman.
"Old Huxter Meredith thought he'd call himself Meriff of Concordia, like it was a mix of 'mayor' and 'sheriff'," Janey explained. "Slimy little polly he is, but…"
"Polly?" Athena asked.
Harry rolled his eyes. "She means politician. It's Aussie slang, and there were a lot of Aussie colonists both before and after the Crackening. Anyway, that corrupt old tosspot wouldn't tell you even if he did know, unless you had a lot of money to grease his palms with. You guys are in luck, though. Janey just repaired the Fast Travel system for the area. It's either use that to get to Concordia, or use a Moon Zoomy buggy to try and jump the ravine."
"No offence, but I'd rather take a less plebeian method," the older woman sniffed. "And Fast Travel is the lesser of two evils."
Before anyone could add to this, a horribly, horribly familiar voice to Harry spoke through their ECHO units. "Vault Hunters, this is Colonel Zarpedon, commander of the Dahl forces currently occupying Helios Station."
COLONEL TUNGSTEENA ZARPEDON
Wants to Save the Universe, Believe It or Not…
Harry barely noticed the snickering of the gathered mercenaries. Instead, he stared in horror at the avatar in his HUD. The same face, but older, more careworn…and with glowing violet eyes with unhealthy cracks in them. The same voice continued. "I must insist that you depart Elpis at once. Things are about to get worse, and I have no intention of involving those who have no investment in this."
Athena scowled, before sending a reply. "What about the crew of Helios? The ones you slaughtered? Or the escape ships you scuttled? You wish to show us mercy when you have shown innocents none?"
"The casualties were unfortunate, and I have placed the remainder of the Helios crew in detention. Those who surrendered were spared. Injured combatants have been given appropriate treatment. I am sure my past, present and future actions will see me labelled a monster forevermore by posterity, but the fate of the universe is at stake."
"The boorish ramblings of a fevered madwoman," the older woman sneered. "I am Lady Aurelia Hammerlock, heiress to the Hammerlock line, and unlike my lily-livered pansy of a brother, I will not bow to the demands of plebeian scum."
"Got paid to kill you," the grizzled, older man said with a nonchalant shrug. "Gotta do it."
"So, the Hammerlock heiress and the infamous Enforcer Wilhelm have said their piece. And you, Athena, you believe it to be a matter of principle. But what of you, Claptrap unit? Or you, bandit hunter? Or you, body double? You are most certainly out of your depth, more so than the man you were paid to impersonate."
Harry tuned out the rest of the responses, resisting the urge to activate the ECHO line and confront her, call her out on being a fake. He was glad to see that Janey was keeping quiet, though sharing a sympathetic look with him. The moment his relationship to her was exposed, he was in deep shit with Hyperion and their so-called Vault Hunters.
Finally, he heard, distantly, Zarpedon say, in a cold tone of voice, "Very well. You've made your choice. Do as you will."
Athena came over to him. "You all right?"
"…Yeah. I knew Zarpedon, a long time ago. But…she disappeared during the Crackening."
"Dahl army brat?" Athena asked. Harry nodded, grateful that she didn't press for further details. It was the truth after all, just not the whole truth. "I see. It must be hard to learn a woman you looked up to is capable of this."
"Yeah. I…was kidnapped from Dahl during the Crackening. Only got back recently, only to find my family were declared dead."
"…I'm sorry," Athena said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Did Moxxi tell you why I deserted from the Crimson Lance?"
"No."
"…Atlas learned I had living family, a sister, and I wanted to visit her. Knoxx told them, though he didn't realise Atlas would murder my family…and trick me into doing it. As he put it himself in one of his reports, I got a little…stabby…"
Harry nodded. But even so, he looked up to Helios. Zarpedon…his adoptive mother…was up there. She didn't know he was alive, and she had been driven insane by something. But what? And how could he get in touch with her without being targeted by these would-be Vault Hunters?
There is a chamber within a secret facility on Pandora, where a young woman, in her late teens, sat, strapped to an electric throne, wires protruding from implants on her temple. Dark hair framed her features, and her eyes were an electric blue. She was dressed in a figure-hugging bodysuit, her frame painfully thin, while on her arm and her collarbone, blue tattoo-like patterns glowed softly. Tubes penetrated the suit in key areas, IV lines, catheters and the like.
ANGEL CLARKE(2)
AS
THE PHASE-SHIFT SIREN
A Caged Bird
"…Can't contact Elpis," the young woman murmured to herself. "Can't even hack the systems. Someone's triggered a failsafe." She sighed softly, the sound echoing around the chamber. "Last message Dad sent was that Dahl ships were attacking. The Vault Hunters he hired should be there by now…is it too much to hope that he'll get killed? No, if he does, who else knows I am here?"
And then, impossibly, the doors opened. And a cloaked and hooded figure strode through. "I know you're here, Angel. And the problem is, your sperm donor is like a cockroach. He just doesn't die when he's supposed to."
Angel blinked. With an effort, she suppressed the automated defence systems, though none had triggered beforehand. The voice was distorted through a vocoder. "Who are you?"
"…Your salvation, Angel. I am getting you free of this place. However, I need you to do me a big favour in turn. You need to come with me to Elpis, we are going to save someone from having a lobotomy, and then, we are going to bring down your bastard of a father."
"Stop beating around the bush! Who are you?"
"That can wait until we are away from prying ears," the figure said. "But if you need a name now…call me Blinovitch."
BLINOVITCH
AS
THE WILD-CARD
Who the Hell is This Guy?!
CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:
Well, that just happened. We'll be learning details about what happened to Harry during his time in the Potterverse later, as well as other elements of his childhood.
Also, who is this Blinovitch character? Those familiar with Doctor Who will probably have heard of the name Blinovitch, which is an oblique clue as to who he may be.
1. I couldn't resist a reference to a SatAM show I once watched as a kid, SilverHawks, about a group of cyborgs that was basically Thundercats in space. It was also cheesy as fuck, in hindsight. The 'partly metal, partly real' quote is really the only part of the theme song I remember, aside from repeated singing of the title.
2. In my OC-centric Borderlands series The Ballad of Ricky and Angel, Angel and Jack were given the last name of Clarke, as a tribute to Jack's voice actor, Dameon Clarke.